El Tigre Pyramid

17.7536°N, 89.9114°W.

El Tigre Pyramid stands on the western side of El Mirador in the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala, opposite La Danta in the city's twin-pyramid configuration. Built during the Late Preclassic between approximately 300 BCE and 150 CE, El Tigre rises about 55 metres in a stepped triadic plan: a central pyramid flanked by two smaller summit pyramids on a shared platform. This triadic arrangement first appears at El Mirador and becomes the signature plan of subsequent Preclassic Maya architecture. The exterior was finished in white stucco and painted with massive stylized masks of jaguar deities flanking the central staircase. The pyramid was first documented by the Carnegie Institution in 1930 and later excavated under Bruce Dahlin and Ray Matheny in the 1970s and 1980s. The Mirador Basin Project's continuing LiDAR survey work has shown that El Tigre and La Danta were connected by a raised stone causeway running across the central plaza.

El Tigre is the prototype that every later Maya temple complex copies from — built before there was anything to copy.